I have posted on several occasions on what it means for opposition to be disloyal.
Underlying my posts was a column by New Zealand's Paul Buchanan on when opposition becomes disloyal. He distinguishes between loyal and disloyal opposition as follows:
Loyal opposition may be principled or unprincipled. Principled loyal opposition is based on sincerely held beliefs that are maintained regardless of the immediate political context, for example, opposition to abortion or access to automatic weapons on demand. It also includes a commitment to the rules of the political game, which in democracies means adherence to transparency, honest voice, majority representation and acceptance of electoral outcomes in exchange for a chance to regularly compete for political office within formally defined timeframes and under universally competitive rules and conditions.
Unprincipled but loyal opposition if based upon temporal opportunism tied to the immediate context, which seeks to gain political advantage without regard to the sincerity of the actor’s belief in a given policy position. Yet, as with principled loyal oppositions, unprincipled loyal oppositions play within the rules of the democratic game as given, including unwritten norms of comportment and civility with regards to what is permissible and impermissible as proper political discourse. Whatever its character, loyal opposition sees the government as an adversary, not an enemy. No matter how they play, politics is a competitive high stakes game, not a war.
Disloyal oppositions are, by definition, unprincipled. Not because they lack conviction in their beliefs (some do), but because of their disrespect for the rules of the democratic game. Their view of political rules and procedures is purely instrumental: if they suit the pursuit of ideological or policy objectives they can be used. If not, they can be circumvented. The goal is to bring down the government of the day regardless of cost or consequence. Hence disloyal oppositions hold little regard for established rules and institutional norms even if it suited them when in government or as a historical precedent. The strategy is to say anything, stop at nothing, lie, cheat and if possible steal in order to undermine the government in the eyes of the public and thereby weaken its ability to pursue a policy agenda and carry out its constitutional obligations. For disloyal oppositions, politics is war and the ends justify the means.
(Emphasis added). He goes on to discuss as a classic disloyal opposition conservative opposition to Salvador Allende in Chile, up to and including funding paramilitaries and seeking a coup.
I raised the question at the time -- does opposition have to resort to violence or at least illegality to be considered "disloyal." It seemed and important question because at the time (the Obamacare debate), Republicans were playing hardball but not doing anything illegal, or advocating illegal actions. I called them hardball but loyal.
During debt ceiling negotiations, I decided that the Republicans were being disloyal. They were threatening serious harm to the country in order to force over an agenda that they lacked the votes to pass through the normal legislative process. I acknowledged that it is normal when one party holds the Presidency and the Senate and the other holds the House (which was the case at the time), it is perfectly acceptable for a loyal opposition to drive a hard bargain. It is even acceptable if one party holds the presidency and the other has a veto-proof majority in both houses for the opposition party to pass whatever it wants over the President's veto. But to hold the country hostage to force legislation that the opposition party lacks the votes to pass as normal legislation is to refuse to accept "electoral outcomes" and "formally defined timeframes."*
But I am beginning to see another component to loyalty (in opposition or ruling party). It is not enough to respect electoral outcomes. A party must refrain from purposefully harming its fellow citizens to score political points. Obviously parties often disagree on what is in the public interest. Also, it is obviously sometimes necessary to ask the public to make sacrifices now for the sake of the future. (Think Winston Churchill promising only tears and toil, sweat and blood). But it would be disloyal, say, for the opposition party to block disaster relief to an state to punish it for voting for the sitting president. And it is disloyalty for the opposition party to take actions intended to harm the country in order to make the ruling party look bad. Here I will quote Norman Ornstein:
When a law is enacted, representatives who opposed it have some choices (which are not mutually exclusive). They can try to repeal it, which is perfectly acceptable . . . . They can try to amend it to make it work better -- not just perfectly acceptable but desirable, if the goal is to improve a cumbersome law to work better for the betterment of the society and its people. They can strive to make sure that the law does the most for Americans it is intended to serve, including their own constituents, while doing the least damage to the society and the economy. Or they can step aside and leave the burden of implementation to those who supported the law and got it enacted in the first place.
But to do everything possible to undercut and destroy its implementation -- which in this case means finding ways to deny coverage to many who lack any health insurance; to keep millions who might be able to get better and cheaper coverage in the dark about their new options; to create disruption for the health providers who are trying to implement the law, including insurers, hospitals, and physicians; to threaten the even greater disruption via a government shutdown or breach of the debt limit in order to blackmail the president into abandoning the law; and to hope to benefit politically from all the resulting turmoil -- is simply unacceptable, even contemptible.
Ornstein was writing in the context of Obamacare. Republicans were doing their utmost to sabotage the law and prevent anyone from benefitting. They would go on to refuse to cooperate in any attempt to smooth out the glitches and problems that invariably result from any major change in policy and, in fact, sought to magnify those glitches to undermine the law. It is easy to imaging under a Biden Administration a Republican-led Senate blocking any relief for Covid-related disruptions to the economy.** Or even blocking legislation to distribute vaccine and other measure to end the pandemic.
None of this would be illegal. But it is disloyalty. And worse, as we have seen for some time, our system creates an incentive for the opposition party in Congress to do all it can to hurt the country so that the President's party will be blamed.
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*And, it should go without saying, Donald Trump making clear that if he loses he will sue to overturn the outcome and Republicans hastily affirming a Supreme Court Justice to rule his way is also a refusal to accept "electoral outcomes." The extraordinary attempts Republicans are making to block electoral avenues favored by Democrats is a refusal to accept "universally competitive rules and conditions."
**Even if we assume no economic restrictions to block the disease, eventually allowing out-of-control exponential growth will cause economic disruptions of its own.
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